Five or eleven quotes from Alan Watts…

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.”

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”

“When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.”